Walking in the countryside
It was Astrid’s birthday today. I realise that she has been mentioned quite often in passing here, without my explaining who she is. Astrid has been my girlfriend for about the last 7-8 months or so. She is lovely.
She is also a bit camera shy, so there are not too many pictures of her on HFTD. In any case, this website is primarily about my own experiences; I feel a little uncomfortable about writing things about those around me, who have of course not consented to take part in this project and could probably do without details of their lives being published on the internet for all to see. Therefore, if what is written here seems very self-centred, that’s because it is.
Back to the point, which is that we had decided to do something nice today. Specifically, it had seemed like a good idea to get out of the city for a bit. To this end, we took a train to Amersfoort; that it is not the most exciting place is putting it kindly, but from there we could go walking in the countryside.
Now, you cannot just “go walking” in the Netherlands as can be done in Scotland. Every square metre of this country appears to have been zoned for something or other, and this means that if you wish to see some countryside you must stick to the paths provided for this purpose. All over the place are signs reading verboden toegang (no admittance), and you are never so very far from a motorway or industrial estate. Still, what there is is indeed pretty in its own way, and I certainly enjoyed our little trip today.
After four hours of walking we were pretty cold and tired, and stopped for something to eat in Amersfoort before heading back to Amsterdam, and another active, sporty activity… swimming!
Yes, we thought that it would be nice to go for a swim, and did so in the Zuiderbad. This is a lovely old swimming pool next to the Rijksmuseum, with a huge pitched roof with roof-lights which reminds me a lot of the pool I used to visit nearly every day when I worked in Edinburgh. I feel quite bad that I have fallen out of this habit since living in Holland, but I certainly felt like I would not mind at all coming back here again in the future.
Later on, we had dinner in an Italian restaurant near to my house. Not the most amazing place, in my opinion, but there was something worth my explaining it here…
It consisted of a large (about 50cm wide) round cheese cut in half lengthwise on a trolley, which would be wheeled up to the table of the lucky person who had ordered the particular dish for which it was needed. The waiter would then, with much theatrics, pour some kind of flammable liquid onto it, set it alight, and swirl it round with a ladle until there was a pool of melted cheese on top of the big solid round cheese. Into this he would throw some sort of mixture of pasta and vegetables/meat/whatever, which would in turn be mixed around and finally ladled out onto a plate. A very roundabout way of making a cheese sauce, but fascinating to watch and no doubt delicious too; how unfortunate that I had already ordered.
Here it is; sometimes a very bad drawing is worth a whole page of the most articulate text.
